The next five chapters survey five representative (if peculiar) circumstances in which military and/or law enforcement authorities in different countries were called upon to apply various quantities of physical force against armed opponents. In each of these confrontations, violence erupted – many people died and much property was destroyed – and in each instance, reviewers have questioned the tactics, weaponry, and timing of the final assault, wondering whether some of the carnage might have been avoided. This chapter, and the four that follow, pick apart these incidents in some detail, focusing especially on the implements wielded by the opposing forces and raising the question of the possible utility of non-lethal weapons, especially the new and evolving NLW technologies introduced earlier. In each chapter, we first examine the background to the firefight, then describe the shooting itself, then inquire what difference modern non-lethal devices might have made.

BACKGROUND ON THE WACO CONFRONTATION

A tumultuous religious community – many labeled it a cult – settled ten miles outside Waco, Texas, in the 1930s. By 1987 these Branch Davidians (a radical offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, which emphatically denied any continuing connection) were led by the messianic Vernon Howell, who later changed his name to David Koresh. As the sect grew, and as Koresh's control over them became absolute and bizarre, they developed an apocalyptic theology, with Koresh prophesizing an imminent, fiery end to the world.